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Friday, June 07, 2013

The Lord's Prayer in the Wilderness

I admire the young man who quoted the Lord's Prayer during his speech as valedictorian at his high school graduation. We need more people, young and old, with that kind of boldness. But we see acts like this every few weeks, celebrate them, and then pick up and carry on with our lives, without asking any deeper questions. How rare is an act like this? (Very rare.) Why is it so rare? We're celebrating it because it's an odd thing in the public schools. Why is it odd? It's odd because a pagan worldview runs the school system. Here's one kid who made it through with his faith intact. How many more don't? We then send our kids to state-run colleges, where a pagan worldview governs everything, and even more kids who grow up in church lose their faith. Why do we keep letting pagans do the educating? Why do we keep sending kids to government schools? For proms, sports teams, the "school experience", whatever that entails? But isn't the purpose of school to educate a person? And isn't it so often the case that what dictates our decisions in this, as in other areas of life, is our fear of looking weird to others? "The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe" (Prov. 29:25). We define our faith by our feelings and experience, rather than by the truth of Scripture - "you ask me how I know he lives - he lives within my heart". It is no wonder then that what is most important to us otherwise is experience and feelings, not the content of what is taught in the classroom. If we want to make a change in our communities and in our world, more foundational issues have to be dealt with. Otherwise, we will keep doing little more than throwing a bucket of water on a raging wildfire, which is what acts like this largely amount to, admirable though they be.